Writer Writing about the WPA Writers' Experiences and more Adventures in First-Person America

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Spring in Arizona

With spring comes a blooming of books: this week marks the anniversaries of the WPA guides to Arizona (70 years ago) and Washington, DC (73 years).
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Arizona guidebook includes the work of the peripatetic Harry Partch, who's recalled now mainly for his music and his invention of new instruments for playing it. (The song “Harry Partch” by Beck uses Partch’s 43-tone scale. Thanks, Wikipedia.) But Partch flirted with becoming a writer before he settled on music, and his wide sense of the world informs his compositions from U.S. Highball to “Daphne of the Dunes.” It’s not clear if Partch is responsible, but the Arizona guide’s essay on the arts notes that the state’s landscapes inspired compositions ranging from Ferde Grofe’s Grand Canyon Suite and Victor Young’s Arizona Sketches to Cadman’s Land of the Sky Blue Water. And the guidebook's section on folklore lovingly describes musical instruments brought by immigrant groups, including the gusle: “something like a mandolin, with goatskin across the sounding box and strands of horsehair for string”; played with a bow, it made the perfect accompaniment to a song like “Underground in America,” Lazar Jurich’s lament of a Serbian miner.

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David Taylor's Soul of a People blog

About Me

Author of Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America and writer and co-producer of the Smithsonian documentary, Soul of a People: Writing America's Story. Co-author of The War of 1812 and the Rise of the U.S. Navy. I lead workshops at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD. www.davidataylor.com